A couple of weeks ago the Conservation Research field crew traveled out to Unity, Oregon, to monitor Lupinus lepidus var. cusickii. Also known as Cusick’s lupine, this small, perennial plant is listed as endangered by the Oregon Department of Agriculture, “special status” by the Bureau of Land Management, and a Species of Concern by […]

Starting in 2015, IAE was awarded an opportunity to engage in collecting seed of a diversity of plant species from remnant prairies on the Central Oregon Coast. The project will support ongoing restoration efforts for the Oregon silverspot butterfly (OSB) at Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge near Pacific City, and will benefit other restoration sites […]

Taylor’s checkerspot caterpillars took a break in summer and fall but they are now active and feeding in winter. In Oregon, they are feeding mostly on English plantain. At this time of year they are small creatures about ½-inch long with dark hairs and red spots. The species was recently listed by the US Fish […]

The final sentence of the AmeriCorps pledge is, “I am an AmeriCorps member, and I will get things done.” That is exactly what the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps Gold 5 team has been doing at IAE for the past six weeks, November 7-December 20, 2016. The 12-member team has made incredible contributions to 15 […]

Over the last two years, the Institute for Applied Ecology (IAE) has been developing propagation protocols to grow Bartonberry (Rubus bartonianus) from seed and cuttings, so that it may be reintroduced to the historic range, to maintain its historic global distribution. In addition to IAE staff, Matt Bahm, Erin Gray, Denise Giles-Johnson, and Meaghan Petix, […]

Last week the Conservation Research team headed out to the central Oregon coast for one of our first trips of the 2016 season! We met up with one of our partners, Marty Stein (USFS), and went to four sites within the Suislaw National Forest – Tahkenitch, Overlook South, Overlook North, and Siltcoos (from south to […]

IAE is pleased to announce the 4th National Native Seed Conference has been scheduled. We will be hosting this event February 13-16, 2017, at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. For more information about the conference and to sign up to receive updates, head to the conference website. Many thanks to the Bureau of […]

The Oak Basin Propagation Project is a collaboration between Oregon Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Institute for Applied Ecology’s (IAE) Habitat Restoration (HR) group and Ecological Education (EE). Together, teams are working to restore a prairie site for the endangered Fender’s blue butterfly just east of Brownsville, OR. Ian Silvernail (HR) is the lead biologist […]

This past week we welcomed our new crew of IAE/NPSO interns: Liza Holtz, Sarai Carter, and Ari Freitag! Liza is absolutely thrilled to be a Conservation Research Intern with IAE! She received a B.S. in Natural Sciences with an emphasis in Biology from the University of Puget Sound (2013). During her undergraduate studies she researched […]

This has been a boom year for Taylor’s checkerspot, an endangered species in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. The two remaining populations in the state have both shown great numbers – over 1000 butterflies each – and at least some of this appears to be due to strong land stewardship by Benton County Natural Areas and Parks […]

Our education team has been busy presenting interactive lectures and presentations at participating SPP prisons throughout Oregon and Idaho. Our Great Basin Sagebrush Project is part of the greater Sustainability in Prisons Project. We work closely with the Department of Corrections, Bureau of Land Management, and the SPP network to provide unique and meaningful ecological activities to incarcerated men and women […]

For our first trip of the field season, we visited Table Rocks outside of Medford, Oregon to study Limnanthes pumila ssp. pumila, or dwarf woolly meadowfoam, a threatened endemic species that relies on vernal pool habitat. Table Rocks consists of two plateaus formed by volcanic activity and shaped by erosion. The trails up to the plateaus wind through oak savanna which is home to many different species, including Cooper's hawk, turkey vulture, lark sparrow, and wild turkey that we observed on our hikes. Once you reach the plateaus, you are surrounded by a magnificent wildflower display and a plethora of busy pollinators, and can enjoy a spectacular view of Mount McLoughlin.

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Conservation Research News

In June we said goodbye to our Corvallis western Oregon home and set out for a long day of traveling to Vale, Oregon on the eastern part of the state to monitor Astragalus mulfordiae, or Mulford’s milkvetch. Although the journey was long, it was a beautiful sight to watch the greens of the Cascades turn […]

For sometime now, the fork population at the Institute for Applied Ecology has enjoyed a relatively stable and consistent biannual migration, where these lovely eating utensils disappear for some months usually correlating with the start of the field season, and return with the end of the field season. This season however has been markedly different […]

In June we traveled to the north coast by Astoria, OR and Long Beach, WA to assess the health and restoration potential at several different coastal prairie sites. Three of the five sites were located on land managed by the North Coast Land Conservancy, a non-profit that tackles conservation projects from the Columbia River south to Lincoln City. The other two sites are located on land owned by the National Park Service and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. The ultimate goal of this project is to evaluate the effects of adaptive restoration techniques on coastal prairie. The results of this project will provide useful information for future restoration efforts of coastal prairie, which is native habitat for the Oregon silverspot butterfly. In order to research the best adaptive management methods for prairie restoration, three techniques and a control were established: herbicide, soil inversion, and soil removal. The success of each restoration method is evaluated by collecting plant community data in all research plots every year. Within each plot we estimated percent cover of all plants occurring in four square meters. The plot photos are pictured below:

Control: These plots are established without any treatments but are exposed to the same conditions (weather, climate, herbivory, etc.) to create a basis for comparison with other treatments. Photo credit: Emma MacDonald

Topsoil removal: The entire nutrient rich top layer (essentially all organic material) was excavated from these plots leaving a sandy nutrient poor layer for new plants to colonize. Photo credit: Connor Whitaker

Topsoil Inversion: Vegetation and soil in these plots were turned over so they mimicked dune-soil conditions where nutrient rich soil layers (topsoil) move under or over nutrient poor (sandy) layers over time. Photo credit: Connor Whitaker

Herbicide application: Glyphosate was applied to these plots to assess the effect herbicide has on native plant community composition by exterminating exotic species. Photo credit: Connor Whitaker

View of Surf Pines study site: From a distance, the experimental design and all the treatments are shown. Photo credit: Emma MacDonald

Look for more information on these study sites and coastal prairie restoration efforts in a future edition of the Native Plant Society of Oregon's Bulletin!

For much of June, Connor Whitaker, from the CR intern group, has been working closely on projects with Erin Gray and Matt Bahm. Erin and Connor spent a week monitoring an experiment that investigates the effects of microclimate on Kincaid’s lupine (Lupinus oreganus); following this, Matt and Connor spent two weeks near the John Day National Monument, […]